By Kimberly Ann Priest

“Have you gone mad my husband?”
PAULA, Gaslight, 1944

I watch the fluttering wings of a spongy moth against the
window’s
screen. She wants to unbarrier herself and swoop into
the sunlight breaking upon this semi–cold morning. The dryer
warms its belly behind us and I pull a blanket tighter
over my shoulders waiting for July to strengthen its countenance
and face me like a lion or a man. None of this tepid sociopathic
vacuity that lures me to wait forever to really start my day
as the weather decides to alter its seasonal beats. The dryer stops
and I linger over my coffee. 7:35 AM. I stand and wrap
the blanket around my breasts and let it fall like a curtain around
me
swooshing toward the dryer anticipating its warm breeze
upon opening. I haven’t seen my husband in two days; only
wakened
at midnight to his heavy sleep–drugged breathing, gone by the
time
I witness the space next to me again. The dryer heat greets me.
I unfasten my curtain and let it steep my pores in light sweat.
Years from now I will learn that my body is beautiful from other
men. Years from now, there will be night and morning sex,
kisses after, cold sweat, warm hands, oysters, tequila, and
moonrise.

By Claire Millikin

Grandfather is watching a movie in Tifton, Georgia.
The defunct screen of the drive–in cinema
becomes an entire sky.
He is watching a movie about the war
he fought and in his mind he sees this war
more clearly than the stars.

Into the nearby river, ghost crabs swim
seeking oxygen. Remember, ghost crabs are not ghosts
in real life they are animals, anima, souls.

Grandfather is watching the Perseids on the blank screen
of the defunct drive–in theater, stars alight,
ghosts from this war he so early fought
for him it will never end.

The ghost crabs ascend, through sand
at evening, they rise, el spiritus sancti.

For me, it’s always a mile back to the surface.
It’s said that for sinners to be justified
takes such burning as turns
the whole idea of light
galactic and cold,
a gold field unearned.

By Claire Millikin

Watch the movie, he says,
and light sways through the doorways
and we’re gentle on the porch,
not smoking but there are cigarettes
not drinking but there’s wine.
Pilgrims need whatever they find.
Stay, he says again, watch the movie.
We can only see it in bits and pieces
but our hands are calm now.
Lay it down, lay it down now
watch the flick, the film.
The ocean moves steadily towards all our endings.

By Claire Millikin

In Tifton, near Cairo and Americus, grandfather watches
through private tears at the downtown movie theater
a film about the war in which he fought,

and through the basalt theater door grandfather,
as a teenage soldier walks, prescient ghost who already knows the
end
of the movie he watches over and over, about a war decades ago

when he saw his friends walk through that solid door.
I’ll put on the jacket he bequeathed me soon, a soldier’s coat,
needing a reason not to leave myself, though there’s no end to
wars.